arranging gazillion pics

Raz

Hi, I started drafting this to the support heroes, but then I figured I might as well post it here:

The question is:

I'm desperate.
I need to sort out ~2800 wedding photos on smugmug.

The problem: they were taken by two different photographers. The time on their cameras was not synchronized. One of them has file names like ROT_running number, and the other has DSC_running number (independent of the previous running number).

So first of all I arranged all the photos according to the part of the wedding in which they were shot (e.g., reception, dinner, etc.). But since I want to keep some time order between the pictures (a few of the first photographers, a few of the second interchangeably will be ok) arranging each part is hell. The arranging tools are not too comfortable for this task.

What would you suggest?

Thanks a lot,
Raz

jfriend

Raz wrote:

Hi, I started drafting this to the support heroes, but then I figured I might as well post it here:

The question is:

I'm desperate.
I need to sort out ~2800 wedding photos on smugmug.

The problem: they were taken by two different photographers. The time on their cameras was not synchronized. One of them has file names like ROT_running number, and the other has DSC_running number (independent of the previous running number).

So first of all I arranged all the photos according to the part of the wedding in which they were shot (e.g., reception, dinner, etc.). But since I want to keep some time order between the pictures (a few of the first photographers, a few of the second interchangeably will be ok) arranging each part is hell. The arranging tools are not too comfortable for this task.

What would you suggest?

Thanks a lot,
Raz

I don't know how you could fix this on Smugmug other than an awful lot of manual arrangement.

You could fix it if you had all the images on your own computer. In that case, you find two images that are taken about the same time. From those, you figure out how much the clocks were different on the two. You then use a program like ExifTool or Lightroom to correct the times on one camera's images to be consistent with the other camera. At this point, I would typically review the order in Adobe Lightroom and, if any still seem slightly out of order or I want to customize the order for better presentation, I can modify the presentation order in Lightroom. Then, when I export from Lightroom and have all the images renamed in the order I have them in Lightroom. Then, create the galleries and configure them to sort by filename in increasing order, then upload.

Raz

Thank you John.

Just after I posted this, I thought about changing the exif using python of which I'm a great fan. So I started googling for python exif libraries...

Thanks again,
Raz

[EDIT] - I think eventually I will use jhead